Lewis & Clark Moodle

Izze - 

Rehearsal is going really well - we’re watching the scene go deeper and deeper everyday. Emily and I decided to do the question exercise, in which we repeat to the other’s line as a question, before we got started with the run throughs. I would say that this exercise helped exponentially because it’s caused me to really think about what Claire is saying to me and what I would say in response to that, rather than only thinking about what my next line is. It’s providing the real life aspect to the given circumstances and it’s beginning to feel more and more natural - I can feel myself get really angry and sometimes almost on the verge of tears during the more emotional parts of the scene. I’m excited to keep working!!

 Emily - 

Izze and I had a great moment during rehearsal yesterday where we found a really good tempo in the second half of our scene. Our characters are arguing and it’s a very tense and emotional part of the scene; we found a really good tempo because as we became more familiar with the lines we were able to interrupt each other a little more and interact like two people having an actual fight, versus two people acting out a fight on stage.

Something that was incredibly helpful was that we did the Meisner repeating exercise for the whole scene before we started blocking. This made us far more aware of our own lines. I know that personally, it stopped me from just waiting for Izze to say her line while thinking about my own line. It also made us more aware of what the meaning of our lines were. Overall, rehearsals are going really well. We still need a few more set pieces, and we’ll rehearse more in the upcoming days, but we’re looking forward to performing for the class on Tuesday!

Today, Nick and I rehearsed the next few minutes of the scene many times, making sure we got the memorization correct. We worked on conveying status with our movement and actions. We also worked on some of the previous blocking we had, and made new blocking for the next minute or two of the scene. We still need to finish memorizing. Nick was wearing a spiffy suit, which was for his moot court, which I promptly complimented. I spent a healthy portion of our rehearsal time admiring the tailoring. I also noticed how little Nick resembled Dennis, the character he was playing, while wearing the suit, an interesting observation which will influence our choice of costumes. This concludes This week on the Black Box Stage, with Ben K and Nick Lesage. [a rousing exit music plays the blog off]

Taylor and I have enjoyed our practices together. Last night, we spent a large amount of time rehearsing the entire scene. The more we practiced, the easier it was to engage and become our characters. Although we struggled through our lines, we have fun and gave each other feedback. We had two of our friends watch our entire scene in order to help ground ourselves more. We both realized that our scene is extremely long. However, we are impressed with our ability to manage a large amount of lines. Taylor and I both agreed that our final practice rehearsal was the best one yet. We both know that we need to work on groundness. In order to help with that, we included props in our rehearsal. We are looking forward to showing the class our entire scene!

So, Rebecca sensed a "black hole" next to her and decided that Momo and I should perform our ENTIRE scene Thursday and so, we crammed the last part of our scene into our minds. We rehearsed our lines with each other and then went on to set up props and furniture in the black box to fit our every need. One of our main difficulties lied in awkward standing around and finding impulses that allowed our characters to move naturally, so we worked a lot on that. We worked on action and response and utilizing the entirety of the space, not just standing in one place the whole time. So, wish us luck and hopefully we will give a performance with much light and energy but with the drawing power of a "black hole".

We found that blocking on the go is the best method for blocking a scene. We did not talk extensively about blocking before we put it on its feet, so the movements were all what we felt in the moment. Willingness to follow impulses did not always result in the best blocking on the first try, but definitely allowed us to clearly see what needed to happen. Delaney is a queen. Roan is a majestic lion, hear me roar. We are beginning to lock in the status between us, and the relationship to the space. Delaney felt that putting on high heeled shoes helped her find her character's movement. Roan experimented with his character but still feels like he has not defined his voice and movements enough. Overall, things are going very well and we are excited to show our work.

--Roan and Delaney

The first two minutes of our scene has extremely awkward tension, but have arguably the easiest lines of the entire scene. That was a weird rehearsal; it felt very casual and uncomfortable trying to get the scene to feel like something. It was very comforting at the end of the rehearsal to feel like we actually had made some pretty great progress so far. It's got a long ways to go, but we're pretty pumped!

--Delaney and Roan

We began rehearsals having a good memorization of the first two minutes of lines. That was our start. From there, we progressed to doing a little bit of scene work and finding where the beats in our scene were. In class, we began to find where there was awkwardness in our scene and what we needed to work on, mainly on awkward pauses and general standing around. We began to dig deeper into our characters, finding what our actions were at certain parts and what drove these actions. We decided to keep much of our play open to interpretation with no set blocking to allow for more smooth transitions and allow for the impulses of the moment to drive our character to say and act the way they do. With our most recent round of practice, we expanded on the lines that we had memorized, after a healthy viewing of the Addams Family and My Little Pony accompanied by hot apple cider on this cold fall night.

-Momo and Nick

So far, in class, we have gone through the first two minutes of our scene, not staging any specific blocking but doing what comes naturally. We have also met up outside of class to work on line memorization together and to get more familiar with each other's company. Thus far, a couple of stumbling blocks that have arisen include one or two difficult-to-remember lines (a semi-repetitive script will do that to you) and a bit of trouble defining the space (a campus lawn, as a wide-open area, provides few objects or scenery to ground us, although the addition of a bench seems to have helped). Nevertheless, things seem to be coming along well enough.

- Nick Brittain & Will Beck

Kaleigh Allen

Bruce Podobnik

Introduction to Sociology

Behind the Wheel of Teen Peer Pressure

Humans are an extremely social species. People engage in all sorts of activities together, from eating and learning, to everything in between.The idea of individuality itself is questionable due to seemingly constant human interaction. With this in mind, peer pressure dynamics is one of the major controlling factors in an individual's thoughts and behaviors. Observing how people succumb or stand up to group influence is a somewhat mysterious area of study. Here is an examination of some possible reason behind an individual falling into problematic group behavior.

My personal account of the effects of group dynamics on the individual occured my Junior year of high school. In my Spanish 3 class was a freshman boy named Milad. He spoke fluent spanish and was an outgoing, friendly person. His signature move was to teach random strangers perform complicated handshakes with him. After noticing his absence for a few days, I was horrified to hear what had happened to him. Over the weekend, Milad, his girlfriend and two of his friends were drinking at his house. The group of them decided to steal Milad’s parent’s car and go for a nighttime joy ride. Milad was driving drunk at 90 miles an hour in a residential area when he lost control of the car and crashed into a tree. The two friends in the back had bruises and whiplash, his girlfriend in the passenger seat suffered from a severe neck injury, and Milad slipped into a two month long coma. Although he eventually awoke, Milad now has severe brain damage limiting his mobility, speech, and cognitive function. He can not even do a handshake anymore. Of those I know, this is the most extreme and powerful example of how peer pressure can cause problematic behavior and dreadful results.

Adolescents such as Milad are especially susceptible to the influence of peer pressure. Margo Gardner and Laurence Steinberg conducted an experiment to study the extent of group influence on youth, adolescents, and adults. The experiment had 150 groups made up of three people who knew each other previously. Each person in the study played a driving video game, Chicken, fifteen times alone and fifteen times in front of peers. The friends were encouraged to shout their advice on how the subject should drive, simulating a real life experience such as Milad’s. Gardner and Steinberg found that “compared with those who completed measures by themselves, participants who completed the same measures with peers present took more risks during the [Chicken] game” (Gardner & Steinberg, 2008, p.151). The presence of one’s peers puts pressure on the individual to act in accordance with what the group desires. Furthermore, personalities that lean towards the risky and adventurous are favorable among many teens. Adolescence also lack the driving experience that would restrain others from dangerous activity. Another interesting aspect of this study was the finding that “between adolescence and adulthood there is a significant decline in both risk taking and risky decision making” and that “relative to adults, adolescents are more susceptible to the influence of their peers in risky situations” (Gardner & Steinberg, 2008, p.151). Those with driving experience, most adults, know that the roads can be very dangerous. In my experience, teenagers drive with little concern for safety, which is likely due to naiveness regarding the hazards driving poses. Therefore people without much driving experience, namely adolescents, are more likely to succumb to peers wanting to drive irresponsibly.

Another major way peer pressure controls the individual is through the fabrication of social identities. Society, the media, and pop culture give teenagers certain set characteristics, and after being told something long enough, one starts to become it. In Zimbardo’s (2007) experiment, college students completely took on their roles as prisoners and guards in just six days. Zimbardo found that “individual behavior is largely under the control of social forces and environmental contingencies rather than personality traits, character, will power, or other empirically unvalidating constructs” (Zimbardo, 2007, p.318). If this transformation occurred after only six days, imagine the impact of years of teenage identity indoctrination. Movies and television represent adolescence as rebellious and unsavory stage of life where kids act out and cause shenanigans. People’s lives become a self-fulfilling prophecy when growing up instilled with the idea that teens exhibit such wild and crazy behavior.

In addition to identity fulfillment, the social construction of high school itself causes teens to engage in risky behavior. The seven strategies for fostering social control thrive in this setting. Students are fairly isolated from society, sometimes are forced to wear uniforms, compete to not fail classes, and participate in school chants. As opposed to the military where the institution engineered controls, one’s high school peers hold power over the individual. The individual faces fear of isolation if he/she does not conform to the social norm. In addition to a fear of isolation is the desire to be viewed highly among one’s peers. This is where problematic behavior may begin as a way to gain social standing. If someone parties and breaks the law, many peers look up to this individual. This may explain both why fourteen year olds were drinking and be the reason Milad decided to take his parent’s car.

Peer pressure is a complex entity that creeps its way into most aspects of life. It fosters bolder behavior, creates social molds, and changes establishments from their intended purpose. Adolescence are especially susceptible to its influence. Although peer pressure is not always bad - it encourages competition for good grades, extracurriculars and more - people often find themselves in risky situations where they would never have been without the influence of others. In cases such as Milad’s peer pressure is a devastating force.

Reference

Gardner M. & Steinberg L. (2008). Peer Pressure is a Risk for Adolescents(pp.151). In Carroll, J.C. (Eds.), America’s Youth: Opposing Viewpoints. Farmington Hills, MI: Greenhaven Press.

Zimbardo P.H. (2007). The Pathology of Imprisonment (pp. 318). In Henslin J.M. (Eds). Down to Earth Sociology: Introductory Readings. New York, NY: Free Press.

Summary:

Information systems have strong positive impacts on the business nowadays. There are a lot of advantages associated with applying information system in any organization. Unfortunately, there are some significant challenges that organization should avoid them in order to maximize their profits.

I chose this topic because it is related to my major and I want to learn more about it. This article was a little bit short, but it covered the most important points of the benefits and challenges of information system in the business environment. Anything in the world has advantages and disadvantages and information system is not an exceptional. Recently, information systems have played an important role in changing the way of business performing. A lot of organizations have changed completely to conduct their work by using the aid of information system so, I want to learn more about this huge turning and its consequences. This movement has a numerous benefits that help to improve businesses such as increasing the level of efficiency, productivity and profitability. In my research, I want to highlight each one of them and how this would affect the company's overall performance. In the article, the author mentioned that, the maintenance of data is very expensive process. I want to read more about this process and find some studies that show how this process is conducting. In addition he mentioned the terms "initial investment" many times and I did not get what exactly he means. In my further reading, I am going to find more about this point. At the end of the article, there is a part about the security and privacy. I want to find more real examples of businesses that suffer of data breach.

New words:

1. Traditional business model
2. Initial investment
3. Data breach